1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a personal navigation device, and more particularly, to a personal navigation device that displays points of interest that relates to a user's travel purpose for producing less cluttered maps that contain more relevant information.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Global Positioning System (GPS) based navigation devices are well known and are widely employed as in-car navigation devices. Common functions of a navigation device include providing a map database for generating navigation instructions that are then shown on a display of the navigation device. These navigation devices are often mounted on or in the dashboard of a vehicle using a suction mount or other mounting means.
The term “navigation device” refers to a device that enables a user to navigate to a pre-defined destination. The device may have an internal system for receiving location data, such as a GPS receiver, or may merely be connectable to a receiver that can receive location data. The device may compute a route itself, or communicate with a remote server that computes the route and provides navigation information to the device, or a hybrid device in which the device itself and a remote server both play a role in the route computation process. Portable GPS navigation devices are not permanently integrated into a vehicle but instead are devices that can readily be mounted in or otherwise used inside a vehicle. Generally (but not necessarily), they are fully self-contained—i.e. include an internal GPS antenna, navigation software and maps and can hence plot and display a route to be taken.
One useful feature of personal navigation devices is the ability to list nearby points of interest (POIs). In rural areas, POIs may be spread out far from each other, and can easily be shown on the display of the personal navigation device. However, when traveling through cities or other areas where there are many POIs in close proximity to one another, there can be tens of POIs located very close together. It is difficult to clearly show multiple POIs that are in very close proximity to each other on the display of a personal navigation device. Furthermore, depending on a user's travel purpose, most of the POIs may be irrelevant to the user on that particular trip. For instance, a user traveling on a business trip will have little interest in the personal navigation device displaying POIs corresponding to scenic areas. Therefore, there is a need to avoid displaying POIs that are not relevant to the user's travel purpose.